Outstanding Online Journalism Reaps Awards

A collection of linking tools enabling journalists to complement their original reporting, a hyperlocal site covering a Seattle neighborhood and a small site that covers a big city were the winners of the three newest categories at the 2009 Online Journalism Awards Banquet last week.

A complete list of winners is available here.

Publish2, a two-year old startup of collaborative journalism tools, won $5,000 and the first Gannett Foundation Award for Technical Innovation in the Service of Digital Journalism at the 10th annual awards ceremony.

My Ballard, a hyperlocal site covering Seattle's Ballard neighborhood, won the first Community Collaboration award, while the Gotham Gazette was recognized for General Excellence, Micro Site, a new subcategory.

The awards acknowledge the important role of emerging technology, the influence of the independent digital journalist and the growth of community reporting efforts.

My Ballard, for example, is "exactly what newspapers are trying to do with hyperlocal content." the judges wrote. "It's extremely useful for the neighborhood and because it lists cool places to go, it works for others."

"These honorees demonstrate the vitality and innovation of online journalists in a time of tumult and transformation in our industry," said Anthony Moor, deputy manging editor/interactive of the Dallas Morning News and co-chair of the Journalism Awards Committee. "We continue to be impressed by the way journalists are pushing the envelope and serving the public interest at the same time."

ProPublica, LasVegasSun.com and The New York Times also won General Excellence Awards, which include a $3,000 cash prize, also courtesy of the Gannett Foundation.

The Chauncey Bailey Project, a collaboration of more than two dozen reporters, photographers and editors who investigated the death of the Oakland Post editor, won the Knight Award for Public Service and a $5,000 cash prize from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Just a few of the other winners -- and there are lots more, all well worth checking out -- at the 2009 awards ceremony were:

* Breaking News, small, medium and large sites: Pressconnect.com /(Binghamton, New York) Press & Sun-Bulletin for Massacre on Front Street; Knoxnews.com (Knoxville News Sentinel)for coverage of a church shooting; and BBC News for its coverage of the Mumbai attacks.

* Multimedia Feature Presentation, small, medium and large sites: National Film Board of Canada for Waterlife, described by the judges as "crazy good," with a "user experience unlike anything we've seen"; LasVegasSun.com for Quenching Las Vegas' Thirst, with an "awesome coordination" between graphics and video; and Washington Post Digital for Sacred Ground: The Building of the Pentagon Memorial, which makes "excellent use of the technologies and the tools."

Winning Ideas from "Creative Technologists"

"Creative technologists" and their terrific ideas for imaginative journalism were on display this month at the 2009 Knight-Batten Symposium and Awards for Innovations in Journalism, J-Lab Executive Director Jan Schaffer reports.

“Technology is not a slice of the pie of what we do. It’s the pan,” said Ellen Miller. Her Sunlight Foundation is making data available on everything from government contracts to foreign lobbyists.

Among the trends Schaffer highlights this year:

* Making information easy to access, visualize and use. The winners built ways to track changes on government Web sites, fact-check assertions in political debates, find and annotate documents, and mash data sets. “Transparency is the new objectivity,” Miller said -- sounding a lot like the BBC's Richard Sambrook, quoted in in yesterday's Digital Digest post, below.

* Helping citizens track what their elected officials are up to. For instance, The New York Times’ “Represent” feature lets users track New York state and congressional officials by such things as their floor appearances and Twitter comments.

* Engaging in collaboration and open sourcing. The source codes for winners such as ProPublica’s ChangeTracker are intended to be available to all. "Could we put together a recipe so any reporter could do this?" asked ChangeTracker developer Scott Klein.

The tools these creative technologists are building for citizens also are valuable to reporters. For example, participatory blogs such as Vaughn Hagerty’s MyReporter.com, which collects and answers questions from readers of the regional Star News in North Carolina, gives journalists a real-time window on the interests of local readers.

Awards To Honour Breaking News

The finalists for the Online Journalism Awards have been announced and a total of ten sites have been nominated for breaking news coverage.

Award nominees compete in categories with websites of a similar size and this year sees three titles up for the breaking news prize for a small site.

They are: The Daily Astorian for coverage of the Gearhart Plane Crash; The Desert Sun for the Desert Hot Springs Gang Sweep; Pressconnects.com/Press & Sun-Bulletin for the Massacre on Front Street.



In the medium site category, the shortlist of four includes LasVegasSun.com for coverage of a snowstorm and the Dallas Morning News for its breaking news reports on the collapse of an American football training stadium.



Finally, the nominees in the large site category for breaking news are: The BBC for the Mumbai terrorist attacks; the New York Times for the plane crash on the Hudson river; chron.com for Hurricane Ike.



Run by the Online News Association, the awards also honour investigative journalism, multimedia, blogging, video journalism and general excellence – the full shortlist is available to view in the press release.

“We were regularly awed, inspired and delighted by the quality and innovation evident online today,” said Anthony Moor, co-chair of the awards committee.

The winners will be announced in October at the 2009 ONA Conference.

Three Compete For Digital Title

Three journalists from Lancashire have made the shortlist for an inaugural digital award.

William Watt (The Gazette, Blackpool), Paul Cockerton (Lancashire Telegraph) and Martin Hamer (Lancashire Evening Post) are in the running for the Digital Journalist of the Year prize at the first O2 Media Awards for the region.

HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk reports that the new awards for Greater Manchester and Lancashire represent O2’s third regional journalism contest.

The telecoms company also runs competitions for newspapers in Cheshire and Merseyside, and Yorkshire and The Humber regions.

O2’s director of communications, Glenn Manoff, said of the new awards: “This is a region rich with quality journalism which has been reflected in the high level of entries we have received from writers, broadcasters and photographers working in the area.

“Local and regional journalists provide an important service in their communities, keeping people connected to the world around them and supplying important news and information that otherwise may have remained hidden.”

The winners will be announced at a ceremony in Manchester on October 1st.

See HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk for the full shortlist of nominees.

Local Sites Up For Media Award

Four local news sites are in the running for the title of Website of the Year with the EDF Energy Media Awards.

The shortlist for the London and South East awards has been announced, and competition for the digital prize is fierce.

Here are the nominations:

* bournemouthecho.co.uk - Daily Echo, Bournemouth

* getsurrey.co.uk - Surrey & Berkshire Media

* dailyecho.co.uk - Southern Daily Echo, Southampton

* thisiscroydontoday.co.uk - Croydon Advertiser/The Post

The winner will be announced during the ceremony at London’s Globe Theatre at the end of October.

See HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk for the full awards shortlist, which includes categories such as Sports Journalist of the Year, Columnist of the Year and Daily Newspaper of the Year.

Asylum Piece Wins Multimedia Award

A multimedia report revealing the plight of refused asylum seekers in the UK has won a photography award.

Still Human Still Here by freelancer Abbie Trayler-Smith has received first prize in the multimedia category of the Press Photographer’s Year 2009 competition.

The video uses still photos, moving images, text captions, audio excerpts from interviews and a soundtrack to tell the story of some of Britain’s most impoverished people.

All the elements work together to produce a captivating piece of photojournalism, which was posted to video-sharing site Vimeo four months ago.

Still Human Still Here - Refused asylum seekers in the UK. from panos pictures on Vimeo.

The report was produced by independent photo agency Panos Pictures and will be on view in an exhibition of all the winning entries at the National Theatre this summer.

Among the other 15 category winners were photographers from the BBC, Manchester Evening News, Getty Images and the Daily Mail.

[HT - HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk]

Daily Post Wins Digital Award

A regional award for digital journalism has been won by Laura Davis from the Liverpool Daily Post.

Davis was named Digital Journalist of the Year at last week’s O2 Media Awards for Cheshire and Merseyside.

The blogger and columnist was among several journalists from Trinity Mirror’s Liverpool titles to visit the winners’ podium during the ceremony.

Liverpool Echo editor Alastair Machray told Journalism.co.uk: “It was a great night for the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo at last night’s O2 awards.

“To walk away with so many awards across so many categories is confirmation and recognition of the talent, hard work and tenacity of not only our editorial team, but of everyone connected with these two great papers.”

Visit HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk for a full list of winners.

Knight News Reveals Winners

The nine recipients of this year’s Knight News Challenge grants have been announced this month, reports Journalism.co.uk.

Over $5 million (£3 million) is to be shared among the winning projects, all of which seek to provide innovative ways for news and data to be shared with communities.

Among the successful bidders are an open platform document-sharing scheme and a project to develop data visualisation tools.

Receiving over $350,000 from the Knight News Challenge is MediaBugs, which plans to create a national website where readers can report journalistic inaccuracies published online or in print.

The brainchild of Salon.com co-founder Scott Rosenberg, MediaBugs hopes to promote transparency among reporters when it comes to admitting and fixing their errors.

Another recipient of a significant sum is a wiki project from New York’s Gotham Gazette.

The online news provider will use its $250,000 grant to fund the creation of a wiki dedicated to the law-makers at the city council.

Gotham Gazette is planning to use the wiki to inform citizens about local politics and share information about city legislators.

Mobile journalism is the focus of a winning bid from the co-founder of MobileActive.

A $200,000 grant will fund the organisation’s plans to create the downloadable Mobile Media Toolkit.

The toolkit will feature applications for video and audio as well as a function enabling content distribution on social networking sites.

A list of the nine winning projects is available on this pdf file.

The Knight News Challenge is a five-year contest to fund community-focused digital journalism projects.

Big Green Addition for Local Websites

Northcliffe's "thisis" websites have launched a new section dedicated to environmental issues and information, holdthefrontpage.co.uk reports.

The channels, which tie in to Northcliffe's two-year-old "Big Green Switch" environmental site, include tips, local surveys, energy-saving advice and targeted advertising, in additon to local stories and other information. Users are asked to send in their "green ideas," as well.

Additional features include a carbon footprint calculator, insulation grants checker and downloadable posters for the office.

"We hope to educate a wider audience about the small things they can do to make a massive difference to the environment, said Big Green Switch publisher Sian Armstrong. His site, which last year was a Campaign for Change winner in the New Statesman New Media Awards, also has undergone a makeover to tie in with the 'thisis' network design.

Webby Winners

The websites of British news organizations are world-beaters.

2009 Webby Awards, announced today, go to the Guardian for best online newspaper website and the BBC for best news website. Other UK winners include the Economist, which won the best political blog award for Democracy in America, and the Tate gallery, whose Tate Kids site captured the top award in the youth category.

The Guardian, which has captured the best online newspaper award for four of the past five years (losing last year to nytimes.com), won additional 2009 Webby awards for best podcast and best religion and spirituality site, the latter in recognition of the Belief section of Comment Is Free. The BBC captured a Lifestyle award for its online climate change initiative, Bloom.

The international Webby Awards, established in 1996 and described as "the Oscars of the Internet," honor online excellence in more than 100 categories. The Webbys are presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 550-member body of leading Web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities.

This year's awards, which will be formally presented at a ceremony in June in New York, received nearly 10,000 entries from more than 60 countries.

The Webbys include two honours: The Webby Award and The People's Voice Award. Members of the Academy select nominees for both awards and pick the winners in the first category; online users pick the People's Voice Award winners.

Users agreed with Academy members in selecting the BBC as the top news website this year. Alphaville, a live online markets report from the Financial Times, won the People's Voice Award for best business blog.

A complete list of past and current nominees and winners can be accessed from the Webby site.

Papers Compete For New Media Awards

Regional newspapers are competing against nationals in the digital categories at this year’s Newspaper Awards.

Designed to celebrate newspaper and new media production, the annual contest gives away two web-based awards – Best Use of New Media and Electronic News Site of the Year.

The shortlists for both have been revealed and among the nominees are national newspapers, local newspapers, new media companies and the BBC.


Best Use of New Media

Alphaville, Financial Times - The Long Room

chroniclelive (Newcastle) - Ronnie Gill avatar

Evening Times (Glasgow) - Community websites

Express & Echo (Exeter) – Kellow’s Bootlaces football TV show

Henley Standard - Website

Thisissouthdevon - Rockstars

Daily Telegraph - Mobile applications



Electronic News Site of the Year

bbc.co.uk
belfasttelegraph.co.uk
ft.com
guardian.co.uk
kentonline.co.uk
telegraph.co.uk
timesonline.co.uk

Plus, the video content on the website of the Cambridge News has been shortlisted for the award for Most Significant Contribution to Future Newspaper Success.

The winners will be announced near the end of this month in a ceremony in London.

A full list of all the awards and nominees is available on HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk.

Regional Press Awards Shortlist Unveiled

The journalists and newspapers shortlisted for multimedia prizes at this year’s Regional Press Awards have been announced.

These are the six reporters competing for the title of Multimedia Journalist of the Year:

Nicola Dowling – Manchester Evening News

Among the stories reported on this year by the crime reporter was a car crash involving footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, where she captured video footage and still photos of the aftermath using a Nokia mobile phone.

Gary Grattan – Belfast Telegraph

Video journalist Grattan has produced and edited many multimedia features during the course of the past year, including this video about last month’s peace rallies in Belfast.

Joanna Hunter, Katy Wood – Hull Daily Mail

Nominated separately, the reporters worked on numerous projects including the newspaper’s Back Home campaign last year, which sought to speed up the return of people affected by floods to permanent accommodation.

Debbie Lockett – Worksop Guardian

Among the stories covered by the chief reporter last year was the murder trial of a local man taking place in Boston, US, from where she produced on-location video reports.

Joseph Watts – Nottingham Evening Post

Parliamentary columnist Watts is the man behind the Post’s political blog – Lobbydog.

And here are the seven titles in contention for the Multimedia Publisher of the Year award:

Belfast Telegraph
BPM Media
Henley Standard
Hull Daily Mail
Manchester Evening News
News & Star (Carlisle)
Nottingham Evening Post


The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony at the beginning of May.

A full list of nominees is available on Press Gazette, and a round-up of last year’s digital winners can be found in the JPDD archive.

Guardian Scoops Digital Awards

The Guardian has won both online prizes handed out by the British Press Awards 2009.

At last night’s ceremony, Guardian.co.uk was named Website of the Year and Dave Hill received the Digital Journalist of the Year title.

Hill is the author of the London Blog on Guardian.co.uk and also writes blog posts on the site’s Comment is Free section.

A full list of all the winners is available on Press Gazette, and here are the shortlists for the digital awards.

If you want to experience the excitement of the event for yourself, Press Gazette’s The Wire and The Guardian’s Organ Grinder published live blogs last night.

[Photo - Party Poppers and More by Su-Lin on Flickr]

North-West Awards Shortlist Unveiled

The nominees in contention for the 12 prizes at this year’s How-Do Awards have been announced.

How-Do Awards recognise the media and creative industries in the north-west of England, and this year’s website award will be contested by online newspapers, magazines, radio and community sites among others.

The shortlist for the award for Media Website:

BBC Liverpool
City Talk 105.9
Lancashire Evening Post
lancashiretelegraph.co.uk
manchestereveningnews.co.uk
Planet Confidential
Salfordonline
TheBusinessDesk.com
The Westmorland Gazette

How-Do received more than 200 entries this year, with the resulting shortlist for each of the 12 prizes published on the How-Do website.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony to be held at the end of April.

[HT – HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk]

Orwell Prize Reveals Blogger Shortlist

The six bloggers shortlisted for the inaugural Orwell Prize for blogging have been announced, reports Press Gazette.

Awarded for excellence in political journalism, the Orwell Prize presents awards for books and journalism and has included the blogs category for the first time this year.

Selected from a longlist of 83, the shortlist includes writers with blogs hosted by mainstream media platforms as well as one-man-band full-time and part-time bloggers.

The nominees are:

The People’s Republic of Mortimer - Party political blog (Conservative Liberal Democrat) from Alix Mortimer.

Guardian Politics Blog - By Andrew Sparrow, the Guardian’s senior political correspondent.

Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness – Created by a liberal unionist from Northern Ireland blogging under the name of Chekov.

Iain Dale’s Diary – Party political blog (Conservative) from Iain Dale.

Night Jack – By blogging policeman Jack Night.

BBC Newsnight Idle Scrawl – Blog from Paul Mason, economics editor for the current affairs programme.

The prize director, Jean Seaton, said that this kind of recognition is particularly needed at the moment: “It is especially important, when the newspaper industry is writing headlines about itself daily of job losses and falling profits, to celebrate some of the best examples of journalism."

The prize winners will be revealed at a ceremony in London at the end of next month.

Multimedia Prize Goes To Election Coverage

Reuters has awarded its annual multimedia prize to the team which provided coverage of last year’s presidential election.

The Multimedia Storytelling of the Year title was given to the team in recognition of the innovative content produced to tell the story of the historic race for the White House.

Name-checked in the winner’s profile were the Tales from the Trail election blog, which was a regular favourite among visitors to Reuters.com, and its post-election Postcards to the President.

The Trail blog included a special feature during party conventions hosting vlog posts from delegates.

Also mentioned were the slideshows, timelines, videos and factboxes produced by the team.

The Reuters 2008 Journalists of the Year Awards presents a total of ten prizes to its staff for examples of journalistic excellence.

Other categories include: Video Story of the Year; Scoop of the Year, Video Journalist of the Year and the Editor’s Choice Award.

Visit Reuters for the full list of awards and profiles of the winners.

[HT – Press Gazette]

British Press Awards Shortlist Unveiled

The coveted titles of website and digital journalist of the year are again up for grabs as the British Press Awards reveals this year’s shortlist.

Celebrating the best in British Journalism, the Press Gazette British Press Awards are a popular fixture of the industry calendar and six online journalists will be especially looking forward to it this year.

These are the shortlisted nominees for the Digital Journalist of the Year award, and they are:

Daniel Finkelstein – author of the Comment Central blog on Times Online.

Ruth Gledhill – Times Online religious correspondent and author of the Articles of Faith blog.

Dave Hill – writer and blogger at Guardian.co.uk.

Darren Lewis – sports writer and presenter of the Football Spy video on Mirror.co.uk.

Paul Murphy – one of the writers behind the FT’s Alphaville blog.

John O’Mahony – writes travel pieces for Guardian.co.uk.

And here is the shortlist for the Website of the Year award:

FT.com
NewsoftheWorld.co.uk
Telegraph.co.uk
Guardian.co.uk
TheSun.co.uk
Times Online

Bob Satchwell, chairman of judges, told Press Gazette that the quality of online content is now attracting global audiences.

“New readers are being won over from around the world, getting the news from all the different platforms newspapers are providing.

“This is because of the amazing talents, skill and dedication of displayed by the British journalists shortlisted for these awards.”

Hosted by Channel 4 News anchorman Jon Snow, the awards ceremony will be held at the end of the month in London.

South-West Awards To Launch

Submissions are shortly to be accepted for this year’s EDF Energy South West Media Awards.

The prizes, held in association with HoldTheFrontPage.co.uk, include the title of Website of the Year.

And news providers in areas such as Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, and Bristol will be encouraged from next week to send in their nominations for the award.

“The South West was the first region in which we staged our media awards and there has been terrific interest from all the major titles and stations in the area,” said Claire Byrd, head of regional media relations at EDF Energy.

She added: “The number of entries has grown year on year and the high standard of journalism in the region should make for a great competition again this time.”

Further details and a full list of awards available can be seen on HoldTheFrontPage.co.uk.

Footie Site Scoops Archant Award

An online version of a football paper has been hailed the Innovation of the Year at Archant’s company awards.

The Green Un took the title at the publisher’s annual internal prize-giving event, announced last month.



Press Gazette reports that the website, dedicated to local football, also appears in print as a Monday supplement inside the Ipswich Evening Star.

The site has multimedia match reports covering the progress of Ipswich Town and Colchester United.

It also offers news on amateur teams in Essex and Suffolk and has a blogs and forums section.

Digital Awards Round-Up

Recent regional media awards have bestowed honours upon a local football website and a Yorkshire reporter.

First up are the EDF Energy East of England Media Awards, which named the online output of the Pink ‘Un as the region’s Website of the Year.

Owned by Archant, the website acts as a sister site to the Norwich Evening News and provides updated headlines on Norwich City FC and other local clubs.

According to HoldTheFrontPage.co.uk, the judging panel “praised the website for its good level of interaction and its strong relationship with the sports fans it serves”.

The website hosts a number of popular features including a free bet service and a match predictor game.



Another recent regional prize winner is David Behrens from the Yorkshire Post who was crowned Digital Journalist of the Year at this month’s O2 Media Awards for Yorkshire and Humber.

The Post’s digital editor, who pens the Tech Speak blog, received the accolade at a recent ceremony in Leeds.

While the Highly Commended Digital Journalist titles went to Joanna Hunter from the Hull Daily Mail and David Parkin from The Business Desk.com.

A full list of winners from the inaugural O2 media prizes is on HoldTheFrontPage.co.uk.